The names are resurfacing in America’s consciousness thanks to the FX miniseries “The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story.” Those who are old enough may recall being glued to their TV sets, while younger Americans may have only vague impressions of a slow-moving car chase and bloody gloves.

Below is a collection of New York Times articles, coverage from Ms. Brown’s death through the verdict that cleared Mr. Simpson of her murder. The full New York Times archive is available to subscribers at TimesMachine.

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Investigators at the site where Nicole Brown’s body was found.
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The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

June 13, 1994: Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman Found Dead

The first article written about the death of Ms. Brown said Mr. Simpson was being treated as “a possible witness.”

The bodies of Mr. Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, 35, and Ronald Goldman, 25, were found near midnight slumped in an entryway of Ms. Simpson’s condominium complex in the city’s West Los Angeles section, the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office said. …

At a news conference this afternoon, Cmdr. David Gascon of the Los Angeles police said Mr. Simpson had cooperated with investigators and was being treated as a witness. “Obviously we are not going to rule anyone out,” Commander Gascon said, “and we will pursue whoever we need to pursue until we bring the party to justice. Everyone is a witness at this point. No one has been arrested; no one has been charged.”

Robert Kardashian with a letter from O. J. Simpson shortly before the police chase.
Credit
Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press

June 17, 1994: Robert Kardashian Reads Simpson’s Letter

At a news conference, Robert Kardashian, a friend of Mr. Simpson’s, read a letter that he said Mr. Simpson had written just before he was to turn himself in.

First, everyone understand I have nothing to do with Nicole’s murder. I loved her. I always have and I always will. If we had a problem, it’s because I loved her so much. …

I think of my life and feel I’ve done most of the right things so why do I end up like this? I can’t go on. No matter what the outcome people will look and point. I can’t take that. I can’t subject my children to that. This way they can move on and go on with their lives. Please, if I’ve done anything worthwhile in my life, let my kids live in peace from you, the press.

I’ve had a good life. I’m proud of how I lived. My mama taught me to do unto others. I treated people the way I wanted to be treated. I’ve always tried to be up and helpful. So why is this happening? I’m sorry for the Goldman family. I know how much it hurts.

The white Ford Bronco, driven by Al Cowlings, that led the police on a chase as the nation watched.
Credit
Joseph R. Villarin/Associated Press

June 17, 1994: Nation Watches White Bronco Chase

America was riveted by live TV coverage of California Highway Patrol officers chasing a white Ford Bronco carrying Mr. Simpson across the freeways of Southern California.

It was a remarkable episode in the history of television journalism – one that brought network giants like Dan Rather, Connie Chung and Peter Jennings back to their newsrooms and before television audiences late last night.

The swirl of images mesmerized millions, from Seattle to San Juan, P.R., to Brooklyn. “That was the most compelling television,” Billy Tighe, a 24-year-old maintenance man, said as he sat in a bar, called the Shannon Tavern, in Glendale, Queens. “It was more exciting than the basketball game. It was cool, like the movie the ‘The Fugitive’ in real life. Harrison Ford would be jealous of O. J. Simpson.”

The police’s handling of the case was immediately scrutinized, and a prosecutor acknowledged the likely difficulty of finding an unbiased jury.

The authorities said they had taken sharp objects, shoelaces and his belt away from Mr. Simpson, who was described by his lawyer as being in tears today. Every few minutes, officials said, a deputy peered through a window into his cell to make sure he did not kill himself.

Today, the lawyer, Robert Shapiro, talked to Mr. Simpson by telephone, and said his jailed client was deeply depressed and crying. “As bad as he has been in the past four days, it’s the worst I’ve ever heard him,” Mr. Shapiro told The Associated Press.

After she had broken off efforts to get back together with Mr. Simpson, whom she had fallen in love with when she was a teenager, Ms. Brown appeared to have set a new course for herself, friends and family said.

“She was just so vivacious, so full of life,” her older sister, Denise Brown, said in a telephone interview today. “She had just gotten it all together, and it was so exciting. I was so happy for her. For the first time in her life, she was able to have her own friends. We were talking about going to Yosemite, camping, taking the kids to Club Med. Everything was going to revolve around the kids.

“She was so happy,” Ms. Brown said. “She had broken up with O. J. a week and a half before. She was going to start her life over. It was going to be without O. J., with her children. Funny thing, she still loved O. J. She just couldn’t live with him.”

Ms. Clark, at the time an obscure deputy district attorney, gained nationwide fame as the lead prosecutor.

Ms. Clark has been a prosecutor for 13 years, a job she took after a short, unhappy stint as a defense lawyer. She simply could not abide, she has said, helping the obviously guilty go free. Now, since switching sides, she has almost always won convictions.

Clearly her record is partly a tribute to the kinds of cases prosecutors bring, the people they bring them against and the limited talent or resources of the lawyers representing those people. “Slam dunks,” defense lawyers call such cases.

This time she faces a defendant still beloved by some and represented not by an overworked and underfinanced public defender but by one of the most formidable – if not necessarily the most cohesive – defense teams ever assembled.

The trial was often called “The Trial of the Century,” but it proved also to be “the first trial of the digital century,” with a bustling online following that was unfamiliar at the time.

O. J. headlines and “chat” areas are available on most of the major commercial online services. Compuserve advises its 2.6 million subscribers that “if you can’t arrange your schedule to watch all the trial coverage, we’ll have daily updates.” …

Anyone with access to a personal computer, a modem and a telephone line can be a Robert Shapiro, a Marcia Clark, a Lance Ito, or a Geraldo.

With the click of a computer mouse, one can gain access to complete collections of Simpson jokes and lawyer jokes, not to mention Simpson cartoons and doctored photographs of dubious taste. No one even remotely associated with the trial escapes electronic scrutiny.

The bloody gloves that have become part of the folklore of the O. J. Simpson trial dramatically became its focus today as Mr. Simpson struggled, and finally succeeded, in pulling them on in front of the jurors.

“Too tight, too tight,” the defendant muttered, grimacing as he wrestled with the gloves only a few feet from the jury box. But after a few moments in which they appeared too small for his hands, already clad in latex medical-style gloves in order to keep the evidence pristine, he squeezed the leather ones on.

Still, they appeared snug. His fingers did not reach all the way in to the tips of the gloves, as if he could not get them all the way on.

Mr. Fuhrman, then a police detective, declined to respond to accusations that he had lied, planted evidence or filed false reports.

Looking calm, his normally sleepy face appearing even more tired than when he last testified in March, the former detective fielded several questions from Gerald Uelmen, a defense lawyer. Among them were: “Was the testimony that you gave in the preliminary hearing in this case completely truthful?” “Have you ever falsified a police report?” “Did you plant or manufacture any evidence in this case?”

In each instance, Mr. Fuhrman turned to his lawyer, Darryl Mounger, who stood by his side, then declared, “I wish to assert my Fifth Amendment privilege.” It was the same quiet voice that had sounded throughout Judge Lance A. Ito’s courtroom last week as his tape-recorded racial epithets and boasts of misconduct were played.

Much of the nation, President Bill Clinton included, stopped to watch the verdict. The reaction was divided — largely along racial lines.

In a scene that lent a certain symmetry to the entire Simpson saga, Mr. Simpson immediately returned to the freeways of Los Angeles in a white van, and as fans waved from the streets he headed back to his home at 360 North Rockingham Avenue. While a dozen helicopters flew overhead, and fans festooned the fence with roses and balloons, he was met by A. C. Cowlings, who had been in the driver’s seat of the white Ford Bronco on June 17, 1994, five days after the killings.

Mr. Simpson pursed his lips, gulped a few times and wore a forced, pained grin as Deirdre Robertson, the law clerk to Judge Lance A. Ito, read the verdict. Mrs. Robertson tripped over “Orenthal,” but not over what came next: “not guilty.” When she uttered those words, Mr. Simpson’s body instantly uncoiled. He then breathed a sigh of relief, and a faint smile appeared.